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While I completely understand your concerns for her safety and your doing this out of love you need to listen to these guys,it needs to be her decision.Think of it this way you telling her to carry is like someone else telling you that you can't.Give it some time see what happens.GOOD LUCK

"Quit bugging her" doesn't mean you never talk with her about it, but you choose your moments carefully. I'm working on my own wife. She loves the fact that I'm carrying - now. Took her a long time to accept that. Now she takes comfort in it. But she's still not ready to pull the trigger on carrying herself. I'm afraid it is going to take an incident that hits close to home to convince her. In the meantime, I still speak with her every once in a while when it is appropriate to do so.

She's going to need a new purse for Christmas. Hmmm... Maybe a gun tote'n mamas.....

I'm not sure how to change your wife's mind, but I suspect the guy had planned to rob her but was too scared to go thru with it ... his first day on the job in his newly chosen career as a hold-up man.

My wife had a severe conflict (don't we all?) when presented with the question of whether to shoot another human being in order to be able to continue to stay alive.

And that conflict was resolved when I asked her if she would shoot a predator trying to rape and kill her grand daughter. And if she was willing to do that then why wouldn't she be willing to shoot a rapist trying to rape and kill herself... so she could stay alive to protect her grand daughter from that rapist.

I don't think I ever had that conflict.

Anyone who says, "I support the 2nd amendment, BUT"... doesn't. Element of Surprise: a mythical element that many believe has the same affect upon criminals that Kryptonite has upon Superman.

No class-requirements here, but long before my wife got her permission slip (like in '95 or thereabouts), she asked to start joining me whenever I took a shooting academy course. We've taken all of the home defense courses together that a (fairly) local school offers in pistol, rifle and shotgun (9 courses altogether, beginner, intermediate and advanced). She excelled in all of them, and if I recall correctly, she got her permission slip after the second beginner class in rifle, maybe '97 or '98, somewhere in that time-frame. She has every kind of female-friendly holster known to womankind. We just celebrated our 25th Anniversary July 30th, and she enjoys shooting at least as much as I do, and with a pistol anyway, is usually better than me on any given day. Still, I remind her constantly not to forget her gun, because if I don't stay on her about it, she will forget. Every once in a great while she'll give a big sigh and walk back in the bedroom to get it, but for the most part, she just says "Thanks for reminding me" and grabs it without any sign of being bugged by my nagging. So I keep nagging.

I also know she lies to me about actually carrying it while she's out and about. She likes to ride her bike on a path that's installed through a wooded area by a creek. Two different such places in fact. The parking area is out in the open, and when she remembers, she puts her gun in a small zippered bag attached to the frame of her bike. The other day she was loading her bike on her car rack and I happened to notice her gun was on the nightstand, so I just discreetly took it out to her and saw her put it in her center console. When she got home I said, "How was your ride?" "Great!" she says," it's so pretty outside today!" I said, "Did you put your gun on the bike?" She says, "Yes Dear." That answer is her "tell" that she's lying. I've known it for years, and even told her I know that "Yes Dear" is just her way of getting me to stop talking about whatever I'm talking to her about. Then I thought about it and realized she wouldn't have transferred the weapon from her center console to the bag on her bike while in an open parking lot anyway. Oh well. Usually she carries, so I don't make a deal about the few times I know she's BS'n me about it. But even if I did, she doesn't have any real doubts that my motivation is completely for her safety. She might get tired of hearing the nagging every once in awhile, but she knows the only thing it gets me is peace of mind. It's not like she thinks I'm "making" her carry because I'm overly controlling or anything.

My advice is involve her in every aspect of shooting that you involve yourself in, and include gentle reminders all the time about getting qualified to carry. If she gets qualified, then keep gently nudging her towards getting the permission slip. If she goes that far, keep trying to get her to carry. If she does sometimes, keep trying to get her to develop the good habit of carrying all the time. On that last score, it may be another 25 years before my wife acquiesces and does it all the time, but I will not give up trying. It's one of those issues where I can finally answer, "No Honey, in this case, I really do know what's best." ;-)~

Blues

No one has ever heard me say that I "hate" cops, because I don't. This is why I will never trust one again though: You just never know...

If your wife is like mine, she would never want to hurt a fly. If you say she does have a gun at work that's a good start. As far as never bringing it up again, I think that's a bad idea. If her main concern is being robbed, then having her gun at her station or at the register might fit the profile of what she thinks she needs to be prepared for. The fact that she tells you of things that scare her at work instead of keeping it to herself (because she knows you'll start your gun argument again) probably means her mind is more open than you think. Us guys are really dumb about how women think...
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This might be worth a try, but you'll have to decide. If she is like my wife she is less concerned about herself than others. Try to let her know that she would be doing it for YOU. You would feel safer knowing she's protected. You wouldn't worry so much, etc. Also make sure she understands that many robberies do not end with the victims happy and healthy. If you have kids, parents, other relatives or friends you can you can bring up as others possibly hurt by her not protecting herself that might work too.
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Obviously wait for what you see as a good time to bring it up. Good Luck.

Think of it this way, when she nags you about something does it make you more or less likely to want to do it?

You can't make her carry. That decision is up to her. If she's not 100% sure she could pull the trigger and take a person's life if she needed to in order to protect hers, she shouldn't have it on her. It sounds like you just want her to be able to protect herself, and that is what we all want for our loved ones, but it is ultimately up to them.

My wife was concerned about her ability to rack the slide on a semi-auto due to arthritis in her hands. Fortunately our LGS has a number of female employees, including the owners wife. They didn't choose the typical 'women can't manage a semi-auto' and taught her technique to easily rack any semi-auto.

Her first shooting experience was with rental guns, and one of the female employees walked her through it. She now has an XD9 Service in a bedside safe and a XD9 sub-compact as a carry weapon (she has her CHP). I have also mounted a concealed holster in her van, easily accessible by her.

Her mind set toward some piece of trash breaking in vs. her safety, is clear, and she is very biased that the trash should be taken out. Her view toward the worth of such trash is clear, and the trash don't want to challenge her. I came home the other day to find that she had one of her guns on the table beside her chair because a convict on work release had walked away from his job a couple of miles away.

Me? I'll take the trash out as soon as I have them in my sights, if she doesn't beat me to it. Perhaps it's "the older we get, the more we adopt the 'f' them attitude toward anyone that believes they have the right to stuff we worked for" syndrome. Either way, we live in a state with a castle doctrine, and the castle and it's occupants come first.

Now the trash from the kitchen is exclusively my task.

“Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things.But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” ― Steven Weinberg